Alan Rusbridger has been awarded the Marie Colvin prize for improving the reputation of British journalism during his 20 years at the helm of the Guardian.
Judges of the British Journalism Awards called Rusbridger, now principal of Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall, a digital visionary who had “overseen some of the biggest journalism investigations of our time”, citing the phone-hacking scandal, WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and the HSBC files.
The Snowden coverage led to the Guardian becoming the first non-American news organisation to win the Pulitzer prize, while the Guardian also won landmark libel battles during his time in charge, including those brought by Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken.
Judges in the awards, organised by the Press Gazette, said: “In an industry where editors often like to keep their heads down, he has always stuck his above the parapet and been a vocal supporter of press freedom and of journalism in general.”
Accepting the award on Tuesday night, Rusbridger said: “I’m very humbled to win this award. So few of us could hope to live up to what she [Colvin] risked for journalism. What she was trying to do was to tell people important things about what mattered. And she took the ultimate risk to do that.”
In a good night for the Guardian, the HSBC Files, the paper’s investigation into the tax scandal at the bank, was named investigation of the year, while its environmental campaign, Keep it in the Ground, won campaign of the year.
The Guardian’s Patrick Kingsley was named foreign affairs journalist of the year for The Journey, which followed a Syrian refugee across the Mediterranean.
Patrick Wintour, Nicholas Watt and Severin Carrell were nominated in the politics journalism category while Owen Gibson received a nomination in the sport category.
Jonathan Calvert of the Sunday Times won overall journalist of the year, partly for the Fifa corruption scandal and also for the investigation into the use of blood doping in athletics.
Separately, Keep it in the Ground has won a New York Design award in the Film, Video, Viral category.